Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys). Often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Emulsifiers: Sepiplus 400

Sepiplus 400 (INCI: Polyacrylate 13 (and) Polyisobutene (and) Polysorbate 2) is a neat emulsifier that can be used cold to emulsify up to 50% oils in a lotion! It comes as a thick, opaque, pearly liquid that can be used as the sole emulsifier at 0.5% to 3% or as a thickener and stabilizer in a lotion at 0.2% to 3%. It can be heated, if you wish, but you can also use it cold, which is how I've been playing with it.

It is stable to a huge pH range from 2.5 to 11, so you can use it in all kinds of applications with low pH ranges, like gels or lotions with salicylic acid or AHAslike Multifruit BSC and lactic acid.

Leave the oils out and make a gel that can handle electrolytes, ethanol, glycerin, and glycols with all kinds of goodies for those of us who can't handle oils on our faces or bodies.

You can mix Sepiplus 400 with anything you have, stick blender, hand mixer, stationary mixer, and so on!

I've been using it to make cream gels - which is what we call a lotion made with this emulsifier - by putting together all the oily ingredients, mixing a bit, then adding the water phase while mixing. I continue to mix for a minute or two, then I'm done!

If you want to make aqueous gels or those without oils, just put together all the ingredients, and add the Sepiplus 400 to the container while mixing.

If you want to make gels with alcohol as the base, then you'd make the aqueous gel as above, then add the alcohol while stirring.

Here are few recipes I found from the company to show you the different ways you can use Sepiplus 400...A basic cream gel recipe - substitute any oil you wish for the 20% C12-15 alkyl benzoatePleasures of mineral balance cream gel - you can substitute the ethylhexyl palmitate with any light oil you wish, like fractionated coconut oil or another ester.

Where can you find Sepiplus 400? The only place I've found it is at Lotioncrafter. If you have other suggestions, please make them in the comments so others can find it, too!

Join me tomorrow as we take a look at the first of three recipes I've made with Sepiplus 400!

5 comments:

This looks so interesting. My soap cave is in my basement, and it is a pain to lug all my lotion stuff up to my kitchen - so something I do not need to heat would be great.

So my question, I am not sure what % of my oil phase I need to use? For instance, in your basic recipe you have 15% oil 5% butter and 3% thickener. This calls for 6% Polwax or BTMS-50 . So with Sepiplus 400, would I just use 3%, and add the other 3 to my water phase?

Haha. It is not a living cave. How would I cure soap in that kind of humidity?

I figure if some guys can have man-caves with mini-fridges of beer and big screen tv's that only play the 21 ESPN channels - I can call mine a soap cave. :) I do not have room to store all my stuff upstairs.

The order is shipping today from Lotioncrafters. I will let you know how it goes.

I made 200g of lotion. The FO I used was Nurture's blackberry sage with a touch of lavender EO.

Melted my cocoa butter and cetyl alcohol, added the IPM and avocado oil and the sepiplus 400. I mixed my water and glycerin, then added it to the oil phase. Almost instantly I got something like curds from cottage cheese. I took my stick blender to it, and mixed until it smoothed out. Then added my some phenonip and the scent.

It is thick. I put it into 2oz deli cups, as I was not sure I could get it into a bottle - and even if I did pipe it in there it would not have been easy to get out. Note for next time - skip the thickening agent.

So far I am liking it. Have samples out to a few co-workers. I will make some more this weekend without the cetyl alcohol.

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I'm an aspiring cosmetic scientician and DIY girl interested in pretty much any craft you can name - bookbinding, jewellery making, sewing, paper crafts, polymer clay - but my main passion is bath & body product making.
I am currently obsessed with Rock Band (bass and singing) and science books. Did you know my favourite word is "toaster" and my favourite adjective is "hirsute"?